


Nothing to Say (Everything's Lost)

by LikeRebelDiamonds



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, I don't know how to write I just have Mycroft feels that I need to air, Joancroft, Mental Anguish, One Shot, POV, sort of one sided though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1602983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeRebelDiamonds/pseuds/LikeRebelDiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft's POV during the scene on the brownstone steps during 2x23, according to my heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing to Say (Everything's Lost)

New York air wound under the collar of his jacket, sharp and somehow metallic. He’d raised his collar to try and fend off the cold – and unconsciously to foster an illusion of someone, at least something, touching him – but it was to no avail. The steps of the brownstone had turned to ice beneath him long ago as he waited for Joan Watson to return.

He ran over words over and over in his head, still none of them were right. How did you apologize for nearly getting someone killed? You didn’t. She deserved an apology and he would be damned if she didn’t get one from him. It wasn’t that he felt he _owed_ her, or that it was any sort of responsibility to do so. No. She deserved it just for being Joan, the amazing woman she had been since she had first come to his attention. Of course, it began as keeping tabs on the woman who was partnering his little brother, but witnessing her in London and here had cleared what the files said from his mind, wiping out the cold words and leaving an impression of a woman with wit enough to match both his brother and himself. The slightest of grins curled one side of his hard mouth. In truth, she was better than both of them.

Recent events had only confirmed what he had seen in London. Joan Watson was a solid rock. A beautiful,solid rock. She would stand where most women and men would fall. She had been traumatized, kidnapped, and fearful for her life. She could have, and perhaps should have been, hateful towards him and possibly Sherlock for getting her mixed up in all of this, but he knew she wouldn't be. He allowed that she may have, and undoubtedly was,repressing traumatized feelings, but even were she angry, she would never express it hatefully.  She was better than that. It was partially what had drawn him to her in the first place. Her beauty was an added bonus of course, she was elegant and strong, but what had drawn him was her strength of mind and there was no denying that. That, in a sea of omissions and misleading statements, had been true. He had been drawn to her as his brother no doubt was, perhaps even more so. He had scarcely wanted a woman so much in years. He wanted to push her hair aside and make those perfect lips part, to peel back the layers of strength and touch the soft woman within, to see dark eyes look up at him with want. And he had applied every bit of charm he had, unable to help himself to peruse this woman whom he found so remarkable, in so many ways.

He heard her heels on the pavement, somehow, even above the noise of  traffic that rivaled that of London. She turned around to the first step, a vision despite it being mere hours after enduring kidnapping, fear of torture, seeing a man halfway considered a patient gunned down in front of her and other psychological horrors that a woman outside ‘the life’ wouldn’t be prepared for. His eyes drifted up to take in the shock on her porcelain face. Her eyes showed slight bags, hidden under makeup of course, so she hadn’t been sleeping. No doubt his and Sherlock’s sniping were contributing to a stressful environment, on top of the understandable trauma.

Her body language stiffened upon seeing him, beyond the normal shock of rounding a corner and finding someone sitting on your doorstep unexpectedly. He rose from his seat on the steps, ignoring the creek in his left knee. He inhaled deeply, tension in his chest, he still didn’t know exactly what to say. She deserved so much…he needed to tell her that being with her had never been a lie. It had been the only thing that felt true. She wasn’t a tool or a means to and end, he was Joan Watson, Woman Extraordinary and that what had happened to her because of him he would never forgive himself for.

She was Joan.

Joan.

Joan meant amazing comebacks, observations even his brother couldn’t see,a different perspective of the world. It meant a Doctor’s skills in her own right, and…perhaps what he subliminally knew he was drawn to most, a heart that remained un-jaded, that sought to help people. Even though he was only an MI6 "asset",  he saw too many jaded people. He often wondered if he himself had grown too cold, too desensitized to the world’s agony and misery and ugliness, but Joan reminded him that he was something other than MI6, other than a useful tool for British Intelligence. He was Mycroft Holmes, restaurant owner, chef, and man. Just that. Just a man. Being able to be that, with her, was irresistible. And as that Mycroft Holmes, he appreciated this woman who saw that side much, much more than he had realized at the time. The need to defend himself, to tell her that what he had shown her, the adoration; the warmth they shared was real, curled in his chest like something alive, something solid and needy. It was disconcerting.

She didn’t look at him. Her eyes turned away from him. She said she would tell Sherlock he came by.

He spoke her name, and pretended the word didn’t fly from his lips like a desperate plea. _Don’t walk by me,_ it said. _Please look at me._ He stood up, feeling a knee complain from sitting too long on very cold stone.

She stopped, just a moment, before passing by him and taking half the steps in a hurried movement. That she was that eager to not speak to him was another pain.

“Actually, I came to see you” he tried again, to get her to turn back to him, his mind desperately trying to put the words in the right order, not the order that would explain, he knew he was beyond that, but do make her understand how sorry he was that she wound up in this mess.

“No,” she flung the word out at him before he could say anything. His confusion must have shown on his face because she continued, echoing several things he had wanted to say, to ask. It hurt him, actually hurt him, to hear that she was shutting him out completely.  It was what he had feared and what he had expected of course, but to her this woman whom he knew to be strong beyond anyone he had ever known, admit she was not okay, that was like a bullet to his heart, an organ he wasn’t sure worked any longer. Of course she didn’t want him. How could she?  How could anyone?

“Joan…I came here to apologize…” the words felt like autopilot and like water spilling out at the same time. Choices. He made choices...he had obligations... He searched her face for other signs of sleep deprivation, and found them. He searched her eyeliner for signs of crying, and found them. He’d done this. This was the outcome of being Mycroft Holmes.

“Good. Because I don’t want to see you again.”

He’d known the words were coming. His head rang with the words. _“I don’t…want…to see you again…”_ She explained how it wasn’t because she was hurt, but because she couldn’t trust someone who couldn't be honest with the people who actually care about him, someone so skilled in lying, with a decades-long poker face.

He blinked. _"People who care about you?"_ No. that didn’t mean anything. He felt his jaw muscles tighten as she continued, berating him as he should be berated. He didn’t know why he’d thought anything different. She was right, of course. Every word. No one should trust him, certainly no woman should. He knew...or believed, at least, himself to not be a horrible person, but covers had to be maintained. People had to be told certain things, to keep them from doing other things. The world did not all work on honesty. A few men and women bore that truth, so others could speak and chase ideals of honesty and beauty, and may the public follow them in those ideals. It didn't change the fact that less than ideal acts accomplished things and saved lives, sometimes.

The color of the streetlights gave her hair reddish highlights on the top and ends, his eyes took that in as easily as they took in every detail, but this would stand out. This was Joan. Fiery Joan Watson. Remember her well, he told himself, you will probably never see this woman again. Even as she spoke, he wanted to cheer her on, because she was right. A sensible person, a woman who looked out for herself would never trust him. What he did, he did for others, but it blacked him like soot. He felt his jaw muscles twitch with words of defense he knew were useless to speak, but they tried to come out anyway.

He knew that he’d done what he had thought he had to.  He wasn't using it as an excuse, simply a fact that existed. He had done it so often before, but this time…there was a cost. He kept all this in however, and tried to ignore the fact that the streetlights reflected back a little too much light in her eyes than they should, and her voice faintly shook with hurt. To be hurt, one had to care, he knew. And the fact, even the smattering of possibility that she had once cared for him made everything that was happening harder to endure. He had to. So he stood there and let her tell the painful truth, when his knees ached to fall onto the sharp stone and scream "IT ISN'T FAIR".

It was his way, quietly standing back and letting other people do as they need to. He’d done it all his life with Sherlock, he was no stranger to keeping quiet and letting people think as they would of him, in order that they may continue with their lives safely. None of that helped him as her words landed, each like a blow, when they shouldn’t have hurt him at all.

“He deserves better than you…and so do I”

He raised his eyebrows slightly, both hurt at the truth and part of him cheering her on for respecting herself.

_You deserve everything._ Those words stuck in his throat, there was no use to say them, echoing her own confident statement would only sound belittling, and he never wanted to do that.

"I understand," he said, the words a ragged whisper. And he did. It didn't change the fact that watching her retreat up the stairs and into the brownstone left him feeling as if he were not a man standing on New York concrete in dim light, but the grime upon it. But that was how it was. How it would always be. He felt it settle onto his shoulders like the cold, familiar and inescapable. He resisted the impulse to heave a sigh, and pulled his collar up, becoming, once again, the man he had to be, the man watching from outside, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I think his feelings for Joan were and are always genuine. Mostly Rhys Ifans just ripped my heart out with the repressed emotions in his face and voice. It's possible that I fell for the romanticized Mycroft that the Elementary writers tried to hard to give us. Rhys Ifans' magnificent subtle acting DID NOT HELP so let's blame him. This is un-beta'd.


End file.
